This week in 1953 | From the Observer files

When Stalin died, we ventured to suggest that his successors might feel a need to simplify; that abroad they might choose real peace, or real war, instead of Stalin’s twilight cold war; and that at home they might go for real relaxation, or a real war-regime, instead of Stalin’s war-like discipline in peace-time.

It begins to look as if this tentative prediction is being borne out by events, and as if the change, mercifully, is towards peace rather than war. In the first four weeks of its existence, the Malenkov regime has changed the Stalin line, both in home and foreign policy, in so many respects that it is no longer possible to regard it merely as a continuation of the Stalin regime.